Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994)

Director: Peter Segal

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson

Have I Seen It Before?: I wrote in my review of The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) that the first two films in the series had largely conflated to the point where I was not sure I had seen either of the films all the way through at all. Here, I have no memory of the film that plays out and am reasonably sure I’ve never seen it at all.

Did I like it?: And I’m not necessarily sure that I was missing much.

Things open well enough with an extended homage to Battleship Potemkin (1925). Okay, it’s actually an extended reference to The Untouchables (1987), but I’m trying to give the film credit for at least aping a film that itself was aping high art. I also spent a few moments wondering how they managed to get a camera inside of a pinball machine for the ubiquitous police siren opening titles, but sometimes its best to let the magic of cinema wash over you.

From there, I’m witness to only a few moments of mirth. In fact, the biggest laugh the film got out of me was a throw-away gag where the words “Police Squad” were painted in different directions on a door window, so that only one words looked backwards. The non-sequiturs fly amusingly at the climax staged against the Academy Awards, but that’s slim pickings, if you ask me. Just a few lines from Anna Nicole Smith, and I’m immediately stuck by how much I underestimated Priscilla Presley’s competence as a film actress. It definitely doesn’t help that it is revealed at the end that her character has a penis, which inspires Drebin to become physical sick. With this film and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), what the hell was with 1994? That doesn’t even begin to cover the O.J. Simpson of it all.

One can’t help but wonder if this film was the first step in the long slow decline that was the career of Leslie Nielsen. Oh well, we’ll always have Airplane (1980) and for that matter, Forbidden Planet (1956).

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991)

Director: David Zucker

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, O.J. Simpson, Robert Goulet

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes?

Did I like it?: And the answer to that last question is part of the problem, I think.

I have no memories of sitting down to watch the sequel to The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad! (1988) from beginning to end, but there are elements of it I do remember. I remember the litany of physical abuse delivered upon First Lady Barbara Bush (Margery Ross). I remember Zsa Zsa Gabor having an altercation with the police lights during the opening credits. For the most part, I remember Goulet, who is competent in a thankless role, but has no hope of challenging Ricardo Montalbán for arch movie villainy perfected.

And that would certainly damn the movie with faint praise. The bits in this series are interchangeable so much so that I’m completely uncertain as to whether or not I have ever seen Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). Those gags that did manage to cut through were the muted political material. The jokes at the expense not only of Bush and early 90s Republicans, but still smarting from the rout suffered by Michael Dukakis in 1988. I chuckled at them from the perspective of my own status as a political junky, but even by 91’ it seemed like ancient history. Those jokes age all the worse when one thinks about the deep dive into the other side of the aisle director David Zucker took scarcely ten years later with GOP hackwork and dreck like An American Carol (2008).

And then there’s OJ. Not a single second of his screen time could ever play the way it was intended. It’s odd that ever moment he’s in both of these movies, he’s being injured, as if in some other life he committed some kind of great transgression against humanity.